"If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?"

"I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed — I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say Cinderella had to like being queen?"

""Women's intuition" wasn't intuition at all, it was heightened observation, unconscious registration of subtle clues."

"In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?"

"Having never been in control of his own life, his idea of freedom was simply to break free."

"How could you lose me, when you've never had me, never wanted me?"

"It was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe."

"How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that."

"Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around."

"Was his very boyishness the reason he was chosen? In that case, was it not a virtue to be admired, and not a failing to be despised?"

"I don't know you, ma'am, and apparently I'm expected to die for you."

"Marriage is about banality. Its purpose is banality, to create an environment of surpassing safety and predictability for young children to grow up in, the foundation of life, the root of inner peace."

"How strange it was that this other woman, this girl-child, should speak of her son so possessively, should speak of his future as if it were her own future."

"More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would."

"I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb."

"Before the story he refused to even think about it; after the story, it became conceivable to him, and, once he could conceive of it, it soon became inevitable."

"In Vanya's family, silence had never meant surrender, only tactical retreat."

"We're both damaged property, I guess. Plenty of time for renovation."

"Good people can't out-think evil, 'cause evil think of things good folks can't think of. Can't enter your head what evil do."

"I've known some bad people and some good people in my life, and it's the bad ones who live in fear, all the time. Cause they know their own hearts... And they think everyone else is just waiting to pull the same moves on them that they've got planned to pull on somebody else."

"You as stupid as they come. Of course, I say this with your best interests at heart. Most people are stupid. I don't hold it against them."

"Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much."

"She going to be free now. She can go home to Jesus. Call me selfish, but I wanted her to go home with me."

"I'm nobody's child. You're mine now. Not my child, but mine, to miss you when you go, to look out for you, to hope you'll be careful."

"You aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly."

"I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to."

"She never seemed to get near the edge. She lived on other people's edges. And when they fell off, she'd admire how pretty they looked as they fell."

"We're not a family. We're the opposite of a family. We're people so lonely that when we're together we make a black hole of loneliness and everything else gets sucked down into it and is never seen again."

"Why is doubt the one thing we're never skeptical of? We question other peoples' beliefs, and the more sure they are the more we doubt them. But it never occurs to us to doubt our own doubt. Question our own questions. We think our questions are answers."

"Why do you bother asking, when you know the answer and you also know that you don't intend to believe it?"

"Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind."

"How could you tell, when utter honesty and cynical manipulation would each account completely for the things she said and did?"

"Maybe she just wanted to be the one to decide when things happened between them. Then again, what women didn't want to decide that?"

"That was the most terrible thing that a woman could [??] to a decent man: look vulnerable and ask him for mercy. If he refused her he'd be denying all his instincts as a provider and protector."

"She got out of the car in a smooth motion that [he] found attractive precisely because it did not seem designed to make men watch her do it."

"He was wild the way a mistreated dog becomes wild, not because it loves freedom, but because it has lost trust."

"This man, though, was of that rare type that knew what he wanted but didn't want anything badly enough to demand it or beg for it or hurt anyone else in the process of getting it."

"It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead."

"It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don't lie."

"Some people can't see miracles when they're right in the middle of them. Better than seeing miracles that don't exist. You're determined to stand entirely alone, aren't you? That's where I've always stood."

"To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that? That's how most men live, and don't even know it."

"Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance."

"God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart."

"The man who has an intelligent child is doomed to spend his life justifying every decision he makes."

"You'll find out I was never sand at all, but a seed, and out of death I'll make life. You can't break me. And whatever plan you have in mind, you can't make me."

"God's hand is strange to us. He cares nothing for the moment, nothing for the feeble ambitions of men and women. He sees the road that flows onward forever."

"Like all children they only wanted to be known, and cared little about giving that gift to others."

"He would rather lose his power for doing right, than keep his power by doing wrong. Because he loves his people more than he loves his office."

"You really are children. You have no idea how power works, or who has it, or what you can actually do with it."

"No man can bear to live with a woman who speaks nothing but the truth to him."